Note 303 — ROMAN PEOPLE (continued 3)

Dr. Frazer wrongly translates this as "ancient prayers" (p. 411), adding "the highest possible authority on the subject." Oratio is never used in this sense until Christian times: the word is always precatio. All scholars are agreed that what is meant is invocations to deities in old speeches, such as occur once or twice in Cicero (e.g. at the end of the Verrines); cp. Livy xxix. 15. As the recording of speeches cannot be assumed to have begun before the third century b.c., this does not carry us very far back. That century is also the age in which the pontifices were probably most active in drawing up comprecationes; see below, p. 285 foll.